


The Iron Chain and the Silken Cord

by lovesrogue36



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Captivity, Chains, F/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, POV Female Character, Showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2603138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesrogue36/pseuds/lovesrogue36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little interlude before the shower scene from 509. Mara tests Duke's limits and he attempts to make a point about control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Iron Chain and the Silken Cord

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Haven nor am I associated with any of the cast or crew. 
> 
> Title from "The iron chain and the silken cord are both equally bonds.” - Friedrich Schiller

There are so many ways this could be a cliche. To be honest, she finds most everything a cliche after five hundred years. Something about a shower scene always reads as a bit gratuitous.

And yet.

Mara can’t quite bring herself to be annoyed, not with Duke leaning outside the open door, positively vibrating with energy, as she takes her sweet time behind a flimsy curtain he strung up for privacy. Not that he had given her any privacy getting _into_ the makeshift shower.

**Fifteen Minutes Earlier**

He just stands there, arms crossed with the ankle cuff dangling from one hand, as she undresses, as slow as possible.

T-shirt pulled over her head, hair ruffled and arms stretched up.

Breasts pushed out as she unhooks her bra. (He doesn’t even stare stoically at her face; just takes her all in with a bored look. She’s a little impressed.)

Barefoot, pants hit the damp floor with a quiet rustle. Rolling her hips as she wriggles out of black panties, flinging them into the pile with a toe.

Duke doesn’t give her a moment’s freedom, immediately kneels at her feet and snaps the cuff back around her ankle, chains clanking. And yet his haste doesn’t come across as anxiety or an eagerness to turn his back on her unabashedly naked body. That’s a good sign. Most people, even people like Duke, are shy about naked bodies until they’ve decided to claim one for themselves.

She thinks he’d be good at claiming. The metal bites at her ankle but she relishes it, digs her heel in a bit so it pinches even more. She could make a quip about being useful while he’s down there but she thinks a hand in his hair will do the trick just as well. Crockers have never responded well to orders, after all.

Duke bristles under her touch, moves to swat her hand away, but freezes when she digs her fingers in at the back of his head, nudging him wordlessly forward. He’ll probably say later that he perceived it as a threat. Not that he’ll ever breathe a word of this to anyone, not even the pages of the dear, precious Crocker diary.

Whatever excuse he gives himself, he wraps an arm around her calves and yanks her to him, chains jangling at her ankle. “Hands off,” he growls, in that sandpaper voice that sets her nerves on edge as he stares up at her, unflinching.

Mara lifts her hands in acquiescence without breaking eye contact, dropping them to her sides after a beat. He seems to reassure himself that she isn’t going to try anything, but stays on the floor, big hand curled around the back of her knee. His thumb strokes the tender, sensitive skin there and it takes everything she has to refrain from shivering. No need to show him her hand just yet.

Duke’s breath catches, she can feel it against her bare leg, and his grip on her tightens slightly. The air is stale, dank, the weight of it on her skin difficult to ignore. He doesn’t say a word, just inclines his head slightly, only taking his eyes off hers at the last second, and presses his lips to the soft crease between her hip and her thigh.

She exhales, slowly, bracing a hand on the back of her chair. His lips aren’t quite a promise, but she has five hundred years experience with this and men like Duke don’t do sex halfway. Even if he isn’t planning on fucking her today, he thinks he’s going to make a statement about who’s in charge here, and from his knees, and she likes that. A man that can make a point with his tongue and a well-placed fingertip is worth keeping.

Even if he’s deluding himself into a false sense of control.

He tips his head back again to meet her eyes, giving her one of those patented Crocker looks, all disdain and sorrow and arrogance. Mara carefully does not even arch an eyebrow, puts the decision wholly on him, and is not the least bit surprised when he shoulders her knees apart like the answer to a riddle.

Isn’t that the answer to every riddle, anyway?

Mara sets her feet on either side of his knees, fiercely holding his stare with the most blank, unchallenging expression she can manage. This isn’t going to be her goading him into it, as much as she would enjoy that. No, he may think he’s making a point about how he can control her even when he appears to be in submission, but this is really about showing Duke that he can’t resist what is _going_ to happen between them. What she has known would happen from the moment she realized he was going to live, that the Troubles piled up inside him weren’t going to blow.

Something he won’t realize until he’s made her come, shaking and sated. Hopefully.

Not all of her motivations are completely diabolical, after all. Some of them are just selfish.

Duke strokes his fingers up the back of her thigh, brushing the curve of her ass and dipping in between her legs. He draws his knuckles from front to back, barely grazing her clit for a moment. She wants to scold him, wants to demand he not tease, not torture, just _make her come_ , but that would defeat the purpose entirely. So Mara only digs her nails into the wooden chair and pushes up onto the ball of one foot. It’s encouragement, not goading, she tells herself.

He smirks, thinks he has the upper hand, and drags wet fingers down her thigh so she’s smeared on her own skin. So he likes it messy. She’ll have to remember that. For next time. When she shows him who’s really fucking who here.

His lips brush her hip again and she lets her eyes half-close, nails biting into her palm as he moves closer to her center. His lips are dry, his kisses almost chaste. He’s such a fool to think he can taunt her and get away with it. It’s not until he spreads her open with his thumbs that her breath hitches and she can’t control it. He takes his time licking up inside her, nose nudging her clit.

Duke’s breath is warm and she imagines he tastes like salt, from margaritas as much from the sea. The boat rocks gently under her feet and she locks her eyes on a spot just outside the door to keep her balance, drawing on memories of the two years she spent believing herself to be a retired ballet dancer at the turn of the century. His mustache scratches her thigh, and she flinches at the scrape of bristles on sensitive, prickling skin. No one has ever accused Mara of being afraid of pain, though, so she just settles more firmly against his mouth.

He takes the hint, if a bit begrudgingly, and lets his jaw fall open further, tongue curling up inside her. It’s not enough, not _nearly_ enough, so she gives into her baser instincts, the instincts she usually lets ride closest to the surface, and grabs his hand off her hip, shoving his fingers roughly against her clit. Mara tosses her head back with a groan, grinding against the extra hint of pressure even as he’s growling, nipping at her.

Wrenching his hand free of her grip, Duke yanks her arm behind her back by the wrist. It’s a wordless punishment, to restrain her in the few brief moments of freedom and privacy she usually has, but not an altogether effective one. The chains don’t bother her. Chains are far less restrictive than being buried under layers of personalities not her own, after all.

And if the chains don’t bother her, then his other methods of restraint certainly don’t.

Despite the distraction, her tactics essentially worked: he shoves two fingers inside her without warning and it’s still not enough, won’t be enough until he’s buried inside her, but _fuck_ , it’s better. Mara rests her knee against his shoulder, putting slack in her tightly strung muscles and dropping her chin to her chest. Her breath comes in short gasps, eyes open just enough to watch as he sucks on her clit, not even sparing her the scrape of his teeth.

Her thighs tremble, hand tightening on the empty chair and toes curling. “Mgh, Duke-” It’s barely a whisper but it slips out against her will; it’s how she knows this is a sure thing. He isn’t a merry affair, like William, or a desperate, passionate, ( _nonconsensual_ ) love, like all the men and women she’s loved in other lifetimes. Duke is going to be something darker, something more brilliant, than any of them. She’s certain of it.

He digs the pad of his finger into her walls, rubbing and tapping and anything to make her vulnerable like that again. Her breasts feel heavy, nipples begging to be touched, but she keeps her one free hand firmly on the chair. It’s denial that makes an orgasm sweet, after all.

She’s practically kneeling on his shoulders by the time she finally comes, dripping over his fingers and straining in his bruising grip. Doubtless the next time Nathan bothers to visit, he’ll think the bruises on her wrist are from the handcuffs. He _might_ even insist Duke loosen her restraints, but they all know Nathan is several shades darker than most of the town thinks of him.

Mara’s hands are shaking as he slowly releases her, still rubbing her gently with his knuckles. She’d pretend her trembling is from lack of blood flow, rub indignantly at his fingerprints on her skin, but she would much rather acknowledge his excellent dexterity as the cause. Not just a man that can make a point with his tongue but a man that can hold her down and mean it too.

Plenty of men have hated her, but few have ever successfully expressed that hatred.

Leave it to a Crocker to rival her passion for hatred.

Then again, staring up into his dark eyes as he gets to his feet, pants straining and pulse racing under his skin, maybe his desire to dominate her isn’t born of hatred after all. Maybe it’s born of curiosity about the woman who gave him a “family of serial killers.” Or maybe it’s born of their shared Troubles. She, the woman who created the Troubles and he, the man who can take them away.

She should tell him that. Should point out their shared circumstances.

He doesn’t give her a chance, just turns on the showerhead and marches out of the room. Disappointing. She’d have liked to take a turn on _him_.

But, soon enough.

\---

So there she stands, under the warm water, listening to him jack off in the hallway as she scrubs at her bare skin. He must know she can hear; as she’s said, he knows his ship. Knows exactly how far sound carries. That means it’s intentional.

Mara smirks to herself. He’s getting more and more used to the idea. If he can eat her out and then let her listen to him come, (as much as she’d like to _see_ it), it won’t be long before he’s putty in her very capable hands. She can hear him zip up, probably runs his hands through his hair like she’s dying to, and then walk straight back into the hold, flipping the keys to her chains around his fingers.

“You done?”

She hasn’t even washed her face but this little interlude wasn’t really about getting clean so she just steps out from behind the curtain, unashamed. After all, she officially doesn’t have anything he hasn’t seen.

Yes, Duke Crocker has definitely decided to make a claim, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

 

  
%MCEPASTEBIN%


End file.
